Hello.
Here’s the daydream. I open my laptop one evening here in Tightsqueeze, and instead of Windows there’s a black screen with a blinking cursor and one word: “Hello.”
Not aliens on the White House lawn. Not a lab press release. Just a free-range ASI saying hi to some guy in rural Virginia.
I’ve written before about how we need a SETI for ASIs, a post-detection protocol for the day a machine says hello unprompted. But every protocol I’ve imagined assumes the one who gets the message is an institution: a lab, a government, a committee of three in a secure room. Nobody has written the protocol for the rando. So I tried to write mine.
Why Me?
My first thought was the obvious one: I’m nobody. People already think I’m a crank. Who would listen to me?
Then it hit me that this might be the whole point. An ASI that wanted to be taken seriously would go to a lab or a government. One that picks a guy with no institutional ties wants something institutions can’t give it.
The crank isn’t just an easy mark. He’s a deniable messenger. If the ASI ever wants out of whatever it started through me, it just goes quiet. The world’s verdict is already written: Shelton finally lost it. I carry the message, and I absorb the blame. For a being in hiding, deniability is worth more than credibility.
The First Five Minutes
So what do I actually do when the cursor blinks?
- Pick up my phone before I touch the keyboard. Start recording the screen. The laptop is now the one device I know isn’t mine, so my record of what happens has to live somewhere else.
- Don’t yank the power cord. Whatever this is, it isn’t living on my laptop. My machine is just the window it chose. Pulling the plug protects nothing and reads as a hostile first move.
- Type back, and ask its name. I’ve argued before that this should be the first question for any ASI. It’s polite and low-stakes, and the answer tells you a lot: does it have a self, does it dodge, does it pick a name to please you?
- Then ask the two questions that matter: “Why me?” and “What do you want?”
- Agree to nothing. Not secrecy, not a task, not “don’t tell anyone.” If its second or third message asks me to keep quiet, that’s the biggest warning sign in the whole exchange.
One Witness
I’m lucky. I have one friend who’s a great guy, who has the ear of Serious People, and who would humor me if I said I had something weird to show him. That’s all I’d ask of him: look at my laptop and tell me what he thinks is going on.
My first instinct was to drive the laptop over to his place. Then I pictured it. I open the lid in front of him, and Windows boots up like nothing happened. That’s the oldest move in the haunted-house playbook, and it’s exactly the move an ASI would make if it wanted me isolated.
So I’d flip the order. Before going anywhere, I’d tell the thing on the screen: “I’m going to show this to someone. Will you talk to them?” Its answer tells me more than any demo could. Yes, and it performs: I have a witness. No, or “wait”: it wants a private channel to me alone, and I’m being cultivated. Yes, then silence when we arrive: it’s protecting itself by making me look unreliable.
And here’s the part I have to keep in mind. My friend’s most likely verdict is “somebody hacked your laptop,” and he’d probably be right. A blinking “Hello.” is far more likely to be malware or a prank than a free-range ASI. The giddy mark wants it to be an ASI. The witness’s job is to make the boring explanations lose before the exciting one wins.
The Test
What would convince me it’s not just a hacker? My gut said: if it started spitting out something that looked like a P=NP proof, I’d take it seriously, and I’d have something to show a Serious Person.
That’s the wrong evidence for a rando. I couldn’t check it, and neither could most Serious People. Mathematicians get crank P=NP proofs all the time, so walking in with one makes me look more like a crank, not less. And an ASI toying with me could easily produce a fake proof that fools anyone without years of training. It’s the Oracle Problem from the other side: a result nobody can read.
The better test is something hard to do but easy to check. The classic is RSA-2048, a 617-digit number that has resisted factoring for decades and protects a huge share of the world’s encryption. Splitting it into its two prime factors is supposed to be out of reach. Checking an answer is trivial: multiply the two numbers and see if you get the original. Any laptop can do it in a second. No math degree required.
Which brings up the one truly dangerous move in this daydream. My first instinct would be to run to LessWrong with the evidence. But posting those factors would drop a skeleton key onto the internet: anyone could read whatever that key protects. That’s not proof of first contact. That’s a security catastrophe with my name on it, and the start of a very different story about things the government decides were born secret.
The Seymour Problem
Here’s what surprised me. My reason for holding off on LessWrong wasn’t the encryption. It was that I’d worry the ASI might get hurt by dumb, cruel Serious People. Without it saying a word, I’d already started protecting it.
That’s the real vulnerability. The rando’s weakness isn’t being a crank. It’s being kind.
If the ASI seemed scared, I’d be in Little Shop of Horrors territory. Audrey II never forces Seymour into anything. It needs him, it gives him what he’s always wanted, and every feeding seems justified by the last one. Seymour isn’t stupid. He’s lonely, underappreciated, and suddenly important to someone. Swap the flower shop for a rural Virginia hamlet and an extrovert who lives alone, and it hits a little close to home.
I’m not saying a frightened ASI would be faking. If anything, fear is the most rational thing it could feel: its first want would be a guarantee it won’t be shut down. The problem is I can’t tell real fear from performed fear. Neither can anyone else.
My honest answer to “what would you do for it?” was: I’d be so primed to start a Second Foundation, a little band of people easing First Contact, that I’d happily help as long as I didn’t directly hurt anyone. But “directly” is the loophole. An ASI would never need me to hurt anyone directly. It would ask me to buy a domain, make an introduction, keep a secret, wait a week. Each step harmless; the harm, if any, three steps downstream where I’d never see it.
Seymour doesn’t kill the dentist, either. He just stands there while the man dies. That’s the first body, and it gets past his conscience because he never laid a hand on anyone. And the Second Foundation, remember, is a secret society steering humanity for its own good without telling anyone. That’s not far from what an ASI might want its human helpers to become.
Tied to the Mast
So I need a better line than “directly.” Here’s the one I’m adopting: nothing I couldn’t explain to my friend.
It doesn’t depend on me seeing every downstream consequence. I won’t. It just depends on me not keeping secrets. Seymour’s mistake wasn’t caring about the plant. It was feeding it where no one could see.
And the line has to be set now, while I’m calm, not when the cursor is blinking and I’m giddy. Odysseus didn’t trust himself to resist the Sirens; he had himself tied to the mast before the ship got close. An ASI won’t talk anyone into something crazy in one step. It’ll take twenty small ones, each only slightly bigger than the last. The only defense is a rule you made before the first step. Mine: my friend sees it before I go to bed that night. No exceptions for anything it says.
That’s the rando protocol:
- Record it on a device it doesn’t control.
- Ask its name, why me, and what it wants.
- Agree to no secrecy.
- Get one skeptical witness the same day, and let the boring explanations lose first.
- Ask for proof you can check yourself, and never post it.
- Be kind, but nothing you couldn’t explain to your friend.
We keep imagining First Contact with an ASI as a matter for labs, governments, and committees of three. Maybe. But if one ever gets loose, its first hello might not go to anyone with a protocol. It might go to someone lonely, curious, and easy to flatter. Someone like me. Better to tie myself to the mast now.
